Putin described the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as "war" for the first time, and was sued by opposition politicians on suspicion of breaking the law
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| FILE PHOTO - Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a conference in Moscow. |
WASHINGTON —
A politician in St. Petersburg, Russia, has asked prosecutors to investigate President Vladimir Putin's "illegal" use of the word "war" to describe the conflict with Ukraine, accusing Putin of directly violating his own laws.
Since Putin invaded Ukraine in February this year, he has been using "special military operations" to describe the Russian military's aggression in Ukraine. In order to crack down on and suppress anti-war voices, Putin formulated and signed a law in March this year that would impose heavy fines and long prison sentences for the spread of "deliberate false information" about the Russian armed forces, especially when someone uses " When the term "war" is used to describe the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it risks being sued.
But Putin himself violated the law he created and signed when he spoke to reporters on Thursday (December 22), directly calling the conflict in Ukraine a "war."
"Our goal is not to turn the flywheel of a military conflict, but on the contrary, to end this war," Putin said.
According to reports from Reuters and CNN, Nikita Yuferev, an opposition member of the St. Petersburg city council, formally filed a legal complaint against Putin's latest remarks, asking prosecutors to investigate Putin's violations. remarks. He said his legal challenge to Putin was likely to go nowhere, but decided to sue anyway to expose the "absurdity" of the system.
"It's very important to me that I do this to attract contradictions and injustices to these laws that he adopted and signed that he himself did not abide by," Yuferov told Reuters.
"I think the more we talk about it, the more people will question his integrity and his infallibility (the myth), and the less support he will have."
Yuferov took a vehemently opposed stance on the Ukraine war. He has fled Russia fearing reprisals from the Putin government. By publishing an open letter, Yuferov asked the Russian Attorney General and the Minister of the Interior to "hold (Putin) accountable for disseminating false information about the actions of the Russian army in accordance with the law."
In an interview with Reuters, Yuferov specifically asked not to reveal his current location. He said that many of Putin's opponents have been severely cracked down and punished by the authorities for publicly calling the war a war.
Opposition politician IIya Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison earlier this month for spreading "false information" about the army. Another opposition member of the local council, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to seven years in prison by a Russian court in July this year for condemning Russia's military operations in Ukraine.
Yuferov said that in fact, high-level officials of the Putin administration used the word "war" illegally in the past, and he also reminded the authorities of this in the past. Those who used the word "war" illegally included Seigei Kiriyenko, First Deputy Chief of the Russian President's Office, and Sergey Mironov, head of the pro-Kremlin Just Russia party.
Yuferov said Russian police told him they had investigated his allegations against Kiriyenko, but found nothing wrong with his words or deeds. The police also refused to investigate Mironov's case.
Yuferov told Reuters that he had received hundreds of hate messages shortly after publishing his open letter on Putin's illegal remarks. But he believes that the vast majority of Russians know what is happening in Ukraine.
"War is a scary word in Russian society. Everyone's grandparents lived through World War II, and everyone remembers the saying 'Anything but never war'," Yuferov said.
